AD409-Pro

I've been soldering for decades, but have never soldered ultra small SMT components. It took some practice, but this AD409 microscope was a huge help and made the soldering rework I needed to get done possible.I strongly recommend paying just a bit more and get the endoscope option. The main top down microscope view showed that I had made a proper solder connection, but only when using the endoscope at a side view revealed that the flex board I installed was sitting 1 mm above the main PCB and it was not really connected. The endoscope was a huge help in verifying my work and ensured I made zero mistakes.The pro stand base helps the stability of the microscope and works better for larger circuit boards. That said, I've found that the PCB retaining clips on the stand base are not in helpful locations. The base surface is a smooth metal, so unrestrained PCBs slide around while soldering. Instead, I found that the clips do retain a shop towel very well which provides a sufficient friction surface that prevents PCBs from moving.The UX for the microscope is a bit clunky and non-intuitive in some locations, especially on some of the remote control buttons. I was able to figure it out after a bit and all the functionality worked well. I did not try the windows software tools as my lab computer is running Linux. Photo and video captures on the microscope to a micro SD card did work very effectively and looked good (or good enough). I tried the HDMI output onto my lab ultra-wide 3440x1440 monitor and it worked great without any issues. I didn't use it for long however as the microscope's built in 10" screen was more than sufficient for my fine pitch SMT soldering tasks.The gooseneck lamps were easy to adjust, both in position and brightness. The endoscope's built in lamp was so-so in effectiveness, but the main lights could fix any illumination issues while using the endoscope.IMHO, this soldering microscope sits in a good place as a very high quality value priced microscope that won't break a electronics Maker's budget.

Ordered yesterday and it arrived today.The reason I ordered this is to be able to zoom in close to my damaged NVME / solid state drive to try to fix them (I have 2). I have zero experience with this type of thing but you know... Watch a few Youtube videos and you're a 20yr experience pro in 10 minutes! :) Onto the microscope. This thing is absolutely unbelievable. I'm able to view on the provided 10" screen everything in crystal clear view. I'll update this review once I fool around a bit more.Summary... It was a piece of cake to put together. Came in a nice box, well packaged. Had it together in just a few minutes. Turned on and boom!!! Well made product. Hope it lasts me a while.

Just right for digitizing and OCR'ing of old car parts catalog on microfiche. One page of the catalog fills the screen of the monitor (mounted to read portrait not landscape). Removed the hood of an old basic microfiche reader and mounted the microscope on top of the reader, where the hood used to be. It's a bit tedious for a lot of pages, far from automated. But once you get rolling it's really not bad. The resolution is just good enough for that, wish it was a little better, but I think it is at the limits of the fiche slide itself. It's about 200 dpi for an 8.5 x 11 page.

I'm an electrical engineer, and I've purchased a number of Andonstar scopes over the years for work, I personally prefer them over binocular scopes. My biggest complaint was that the limited throat depth on the stand made it hard to work on larger boards, and the height limited my workpiece holding options. The Pro stand is a big improvement, but it's really frustrating that the zoom screw now has such a limited range; whenever I need to zoom, I commonly set the focus above the work surface and hold it there by hand, rather than laboriously slide the scope up and down the post.Pros:- great value- great image quality for the price- improved working area over the previous stand- gooseneck lighting is fantastic- field of view is large enough to be suitable for electronics rework, imo. At the zoom end, it can inspect anything I'm capable of working on.Cons and wishlist:-zoom screw range is really limited-even more throat for large PCB's would be nice.-USB port for a memory stick would be nice-it'd be nice if the micro SD card was hot swappable (the scope needs to be power cycled)-Note, it seems the SD card needs to be reformatted by the scope to be compatible

I have had this scope for two years, didnt really start utilizing it for PCB assembly/rework until the last year.As a standalone scope for viewing, it meets expectations. The mechanical parts of the product are what you would expect from this price range, as well as the image quality on the screen.Where I found that this scope fails is delivering on the features. The scope went from being used monthly, to daily for several hours in the last 3 months.The listing showed WiFi capabilities, but after purchase the manual says WiFi is not longer supported. The SD card worked only three times, but now it freezes the scope everytime I save to it.So I wanted to test the HDMI feature, which did work great for a couple of uses, but now doesnt. Also, this connects to the laptop using a USB type C hub, but all the USB2.0 ports stopped working after connecting to the scope. This happened when I was trying to connect to HDMI and the computer at the same time. The software freezes or glitches constantly (Windows 11).While it has great features, I am disappointed in the quality of those features. If the system breaks down after regular use, then its not worth the great price.

Actually too large field of view. Cannot use reducing lens. Also PCB size is limited due to boom length of mount.A decent microscope ring mount will end up costing more than this camera.